


Alternate Ending: On Atlantis

by ivorygates



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-10
Updated: 2011-04-10
Packaged: 2017-11-25 07:10:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/636400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivorygates/pseuds/ivorygates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An outtake from "Alternate Ending".  Dani Jackson and Rodney McKay have a little talk.</p><p>NOTE: This won't make a lot of sense unless you've read "Alternate Ending" and <em>that</em> won't make a lot of sense if you haven't read "A Mirror For Observers".  But hey.  It's short.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alternate Ending: On Atlantis

"So you're not actually _real_ , are you?" Rodney McKay asks.

It's a question he's been leading up to for days. He's not supposed to know who she really is, but he hacked her file within 24 hours of her arrival. He knows that Dana Ballard -- Dana Ballard-Jackson (temporarily) is (really) Danielle Jackson.

He's an astrophysicist. Like Sam is. Like Sammy was. Alternate realities, quantum doubles, shouldn't annoy him as much as they apparently do.

"I'm as real as you are, Dr. McKay," she says.

Atlantis is a treasure-trove. Things that interest the Hard Science people, like the city itself. And things that interest the rest of them, like the way it's made. The way it talks about itself. The way its builders talk about it. Language. Culture. History.  
  
But whether they're engineers or anthropologists, they all talk about the city as if it's alive.

Even Rodney McKay.

"Well, no, actually, you're not," McKay says. "Dr. _Jackson_ \-- that's Dr. _Daniel_ Jackson -- is as real as I am. You're just a sort of ... echo."

"Merry," she says absently. Her laptop scrolls with pages of Ancient text. Books -- if you can call them that -- stored on crystal. It's a library, they think. Dr. McKay wants to know what all the books say. In detail. Right now.

In the three years of its existence the Atlantis Mission never had time -- or ability -- to read the library before. Their understanding of Ancient is limited to a pidgin comprehension, as if one were attempting to read Shakespeare using a working knowledge of street signs. That's why she and Daniel were finally let to come. Because of his Ascension, Daniel is the most fluent person in, well, two galaxies in the lost language of Atlantis. She isn't bad herself. Even though she's never died in quite the way Daniel did.

They never found -- never _will_ find -- Atlantis in the world she left behind. Because Jack -- her Jack -- is dead and the Antarctic outpost lies dreaming forever beneath Antarctic ice.

If that other world even still exists. If the echoes ran true, the _Goa'uld_ will have invaded there as well, and just as Other-Janet once said, in most universes, the _Goa'uld_ win.

"'Merry'?" Rodney McKay says blankly. From his tone she thinks he thinks she may be speaking Ancient aloud. It's possible. She does that a lot, while she's translating.

"Merry McKay," she says, looking up and finally meeting his eyes. "Dr. Merry McKay."

She spends very little time looking at Rodney, which is odd, since he's followed her around practically since she arrived. Certainly since he found out she's Daniel's quantum double. Either because he thinks she's going to destroy Atlantis or because he has some bizarre sublimated crush. Daniel thinks it's funny.

It takes Rodney a minute to get it, but she's never thought he was stupid.

"'Merry'?" he says, his voice rising, _"'Merry'?"_

She focuses on him then, seeing Rodney, remembering Merry. Meredith Rebecca McKay. Plain and gawky and _intense_. Passionate and paranoid and hating the fact that Sammy made it all look easy.

" _You're_ the echo," Dani says. "Not me."

#


End file.
